Strangely enough my username and password were gone so I had to register again although I have been a member of the board for 2 years now and keep reading it regularly to see what's going on.

Anyway got some strange results from the doc today.

CD4 616 (39%) up from last time and better than any result beforeVL 294 000 (last time 10 000). 30x last time??? Isn't that very strange.

I am not taking any meds but how can my viral load shoot up like that with a strong immune system that does not seem to weaken. Doctor couldn't answer.

I was suffering from a skin infection when my blood was drawn but could that be the answer? I have had other infections over the past 2 years (although I had always recovered from them before having blood taken) but can that be such a difference??

Ann:
Hi Squareman!

These new forums are run through totally different software and we all had to re-register.

Your results are strange indeed. It could be a simple lab error, or it could be the skin infection as you suspect. See if you can't have another viral load test run sooner rather than later. Whatever you do, don't sweat it. The stress won't help one little bit.

Hang in there and let us know if you re-do the test.

Ann

Optimistic:
could it be that the labs made a mistake on the VL?...maybe they accidently added an extra zero at the end. Like Ann said, you should try to get another blood work done. Don't stress out over this, i'm sure its nothing bad.

hope to hear good news from your retest.

Justin

DCGuy511:
I had labs done in early April. CD4s dropped from 700s to 500s and my VL went from 50K to 450K. Of course I panic. Doc told me not to get worried about one test. I'd had some dental work a few days prior and had just completed a three month project which was very stressful and tiring, maybe these events contributed to the change.

I went back this week for another set of labs even though my doc said I could wait until July. When we talked this week, he reiterated to me that the results of one test are not really conclusive about anything. We are looking at trends.

Don't stress too much about it. It is hard to put it out of your mind, I know. But the added stress is not helpful at all. Take care